Golden
MountainAfter rejections from publishers far and wide, an Ashland
womans memoir wins four national awards

The cars on the Golden Gate Bridge looked like toys high above
the deck of the ship. Irene Kai and her mother had sailed from
Hong Kong. It was 1965.

Today Kai, 55, sits in the dining room of the Ashland home she
shares with her partner, David Wick, a mane of black hair framing
her face as she sifts through old photos and remembers the Golden
Gate.

"I thought it was my chance to live," she says.
"Not just be an obedient wife and daughter-in-law."

If freedom was her first thought, abundance was the second, all
those cars.

"But I thought having a car someday would be too much to
ever think of."

She would have her freedom, and have a car, and her odyssey would
twist and turn and deepen into a spiritual journey. Kais
2004 book, "Golden Mountain: Beyond the American
Dream," is the story of the journey.
...

At 40, Kai found herself living in Los Angeles in a
$2 million house with gardeners and a housekeeper and her kids in
private schools. She was miserable.

Increasingly she turned to meditation, which she had discovered
as a child out of hurt and loneliness, not knowing what it was.

"One day everything melted away and I felt light and was at
peace," she says.

Money meant nothing.

"I knew that to live, I had to wrench myself from the bonds
of the life I had created and accepted," she says.

She walked out of her home and her marriage. One of her daughters
had seen a play at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and told her
about Ashland. She moved there in 1997.

Kai wrote daily for three years. She says she found the book in
meditation, as if it were given to her.

"I dont even know grammar," she says.

Wicks support was the catalyst, she says. He often found
her crying as she released years of rage, grief and denial.

She says she never thought about writing her story as fiction,
even though it was scary to write the truth.

"Truth-telling is part of the book," she says.
"Self-censorship is so automatic. I had to make the choice
of being true to my intentions. If I didnt, the book would
mean nothing."

A sister told her shed never speak to her again. Her mother
died in 1994.

She finished the book in July of 2003 and sent it out to
everybody from the biggest New York agents right down to small
publishers. Everybody turned it down.

"We didnt have a real strong feeling for it,"
White Clouds Scholl says. "It was hard to keep track
of the characters. But basically we just had too much on our
plate at the time."

"We learned more and more about the publishing
business," Wick says. "About how much control you give
up. So we decided to keep it whole, keep the integrity."

ST. JOHN'S, Nfld. (CP) - It was 100 years ago, and women in
Canada couldn't vote or hold public office, yet Mina Hubbard set
off into the unforgiving, uncharted wilderness of Labrador and
into history.

This year, Labrador is celebrating this forgotten hero of
feminism, whose ankle-length skirts and petticoats were in stark
contrast to the rugged landscape around her.

On July 26, residents of North West River will re-enact Hubbard's
departure as part of the celebrations of her historic, if little
known, expedition.

"She was living in a period of time when . . . it was
illegal for a woman to smoke a cigarette in an open car,"
says Waylon Williams, a member of the Mina Hubbard Centennial
Committee.

"Just the stigmas that were around for women at that time,
for a woman to travel to Labrador and spearhead a journey of that
magnitude; it's definitely something that should receive
recognition."

Born Mina Benton in 1870 on a farm near Bewdley, Ont., she worked
as a teacher in Ontario before attending nursing school in New
York.

There, she met Leonidas Hubbard Jr. while nursing him through
typhoid fever.

They married in January 1901 and were barely beyond newlyweds on
July 15, 1903, when Leonidas, assistant editor of the U.S. nature
magazine Outing, set out from North West River for Ungava Bay, in
Quebec.

With him were his friend Dillon Wallace, a New York attorney, and
Metis guide George Elson.

By September, lost, exhausted and out of food, they were forced
to turn back.

By mid-October, Leonidas Hubbard was starving. Wallace and Elson
made the decision to leave him and go for help.

Five days later, Elson stumbled into the cabin of four native
trappers, who later found Wallace delirious in the snow and
Leonidas Hubbard dead in his tent. He was 31.

Having read Wallace's book, The Lure of the Labrador Wild, Mina
Hubbard concluded Wallace blamed her husband for the ill-fated
expedition.

When he announced he would try again, she quietly made plans for
a competing voyage.

"This was a personal journey for her, a way for her to feel
close to her husband," Williams says. "It was as much a
spiritual journey for her as a physical journey." -read
entire article-

Can three guys kicking around the country with a mail-order video
camera open doors on the wisdom of the universe?

It's beginning to look like a possibility to viewers of a low-
budget film produced in Michigan by Ward Powers, an attorney, and
friends Chad Munce and Scott Carter. They pooled funds for the
$10,000 budget.

The filmmakers went knocking on the doors of some of the world's
most admired spiritual thinkers and were welcomed with open arms
and minds.

The trio was casting for answers to 30 profound questions, and
they pulled in wisdom not only from those considered by many to
be enlightened but from young people on the street in places as
far-flung as Detroit's Cass Corridor and Colorado's mountains.

The final product concentrates on 15 of the questions, such as
"What happens to you after you die?" "Describe
God" and "What are we all so afraid of?"
-read
entire article-

We all know Thoreau had more than a brushing acquaintance with
Bronson Alcott's experimental utopian community, Fruitlands in
Harvard. New to our sense of the man is the 13-year
correspondence he carried on with his friend Harrison Blake of
Worcester. Independent scholar Bradley P. Dean has gathered
together and edited these letters in a new book, "Henry D.
Thoreau: Letters to a Spiritual Seeker" (W. W. Norton,
2004). The letters touch on matters close to the great man's
heart: spirituality, nature, work, contemplation and
responsibility. What makes them unusual is their wit and
spontaneity. Like much of Thoreau's writing they draw on Eastern
and Western religious traditions, but they reflect a more relaxed
Thoreau than many are used to from reading "Walden."
Writer Terry Tempest Williams said the letters "are written
in the spirit of engagement. They are intellectually challenging
and at times, surprising. They are moments of rigorous inquiry
into the metaphysics of the soul delivered through the impetus of
friendship."

Dean will read from "Letters to a Spiritual Seeker" and
share thoughts on Thoreau on Monday, Aug. 12, in Fruitlands Tea
Room restaurant at 7:30 p.m. This is the second of Fruitlands'
Journeys - a series of talks and workshops on writing and the
arts, launched by the building of a labyrinth that opened in
June. Come early to walk the labyrinth before Dean's talk, or
stay afterward to follow the spiral path as the sun sets.

This is a chance to meet the man who has unearthed and dusted off
several lesser known works by Thoreau in recent years, including
"The Dispersion of Seeds" (Island Press, 1993) and
"Wild Fruits" (W.W. Norton, 2000). Currently, Dean is
editing the 16 manuscript notebooks that Thoreau compiled between
1849 and 1861. -read
entire article- Amazon.com link: http://snipurl.com/gmb5

Alappuzha, July 29 : Which work does Dr A P J Abdul Kalam enjoy
the most? The President took a minute to answer the query posed
by a girl during his interaction with students here today.

But, he explained that he enjoyed all his assignments from being
a teacher to a scientist and at present as the President of the
country.

Before becoming a scientist, I was a teacher at the
university.

One student wanted me to be his guide. I still continue to be his
guide, he said, reaffirming his love for teaching.

He then said as the President, he was cheerfully passing on the
Vision document to students across the country. I am
marketing the vision 2020 document. I interacted with more than
6,00,000 students after becoming the President, Dr Kalam
said.

Asked how science could be a tool for spiritual enlightenment, he
narrated a story of how at the age of ten, his teacher had taken
him to the sea shore and shown him birds flying. This had given
him vision, he added.

On giving education to all, he hoped that the recent Bill passed
in the Parliament would ensure free and compulsory education upto
the age of 15, regardless of poverty and disabilities.

In his friendly and personal interaction, he also urged students
to look for research in latest avenues thrown open in the field
of biotechnology, information technology and the like.

Most of the students want to become engineers and doctors.

Their parents dream of the same. But there are more areas for the
students to develop their skills, Dr Kalam added.

Referring to the development of aircraft which was once
considered impossible, he urged students to make possible all
their dreams.

The advent of Adi Sankara 1,200 years ago was of tremendous
significance to the religious, cultural and spiritual history of
India. While he could be highly polemical for the world of
scholars, he could come down to the level of the common man with
ease and give him encapsulated wisdom in a prayer like
"Bhaja Govindam." Thus it is appropriate that everyone
should have an accurate knowledge of Adi Sankara's life as an
inspiration for his/her life's work.

With this aim, Sridhar Chityala and Sharada Chityala of the U.S.
have brought out a visual mix of drama, dance, poetry and music
planned with dedication. It opens with a Siva-Parvati dance which
concludes with the Lord's assurance that he will manifest upon
the earth.

Sankara is born to Sivaguru and Aryamba. The story gets told
through a mix of folkdance and Bharatanatyam.

The journey

Shankara's capacity to invoke the divine is suggested by the
`Kanakadhara Stotra,' and the manner in which the river Poorna is
brought close to his house. Swiftly, we pass through the episode
which leads to Sankara's sanyasa. He goes to the cave on the
banks of the Narmada and the guru asks: "Who are you?"
The unhesitating reply comes: "I am not the earth, nor
water, nor fire nor any of the tattvas. I am that which is beyond
all this!" Govinda Pada is pleased with this crystalline
exposition of Advaita and initiates him into sanyasa.

We move with Adi Sankara on his peregrinations as he gains wisdom
from the chandala, writes commentaries to Prasthana Traya in
Badari, meets Vyasa, gathers his disciples, defeats Mandana Misra
in a philosophical duel, overcomes the Kalamukhas, founds the
Sringeri Peetam and withdraws from the physical when journeying
in the Himalayas. It is a sublime narrative.

The director, Ramesh Begar, has had an unenviable task on hand
for his subject is one the greatest spiritual luminaries of all
time. His choice of various styles makes the narrative avoid
ennui but then, Begar has had to accommodate three languages!
Tamil has been chosen for the narrative and songs and
unfortunately the pronunciation is not satisfactory.

Sri V.R. Gowrishankar's English speech on the discovery of Kaladi
and its development in the last century as well as Adi Sankara's
relevance to the modern world could have been presented in
segments.

But all doubts vanish when H.H. Sri Bharati Tirtha Mahaswami, the
present Pontiff of Sringeri Math appears on the screen and
delivers his Sanskrit speech.

His choice of simple words to get his profound ideas across is
marvellous. As promised in the Gita, the Lord manifests whenever
dharma is in danger and Adi Sankara was such a glorious
manifestation.

Of all his teachings, the most important is the giving up of ego.
Ahamkara is the root of all evil. Always go in for good company
(sajjana-sangam) and engage yourself in alleviating the miseries
of fellowmen (paropakaram). One must practise unswerving devotion
to the Lord and to one's guru. And till one gains Advaitic
Oneness with the Brahman, one must carry on one's duties in this
world of human affairs. The Mahaswami's message ought to be
imbibed and acted upon by all the adherents of Sanatana Dharma.

Finally, three cheers to H.M. Nagaraja Rao for his lyrics and
music, and to B. Subrahmanya for his camera work that wraps up in
silken sheen the Kerala countryside and appropriately uses orange
colours symbolising mystic consciousness throughout the
narrative.

Universe
 The Cosmology Quest is a
unique mixture of a human interest and science documentary film.
It exhibits a sharp understanding of the struggles in astronomy
and cosmology during the past decades. As the first comprehensive
film dealing with major new approaches in non-big bang
cosmologies, it reveals several deep-rooted theoretical and
observational controversies. This is a fact, well hidden from
university students and the general public, which is recounted
with candour; and potentially leads to the down-fall of the
presiding Big Bang theory. The actors are themselves leading
figures in the field, Nobel Laureates, as well as recipients of
the most important recognitions available in physics and
astronomy today. While exploring the theoretical weaknesses of
the dominating Big Bang cosmology, and the restrictions they
impose on astronomers researching different directions, new doors
are nevertheless opened for understanding the wealth of
observations and stimulating ideas which have arisen in past
decades. History since Hubble and Einstein is re-examined. The
role media and professional prestige has played in forming and
supporting this paradigm emerges sociologically, in what many
consider to be an open debate with exciting potential for new
understanding in cosmology. -view trailers, read website-
(does not work on Firefox browser)

In Johnny Bear Contreras' sculpture
"Seeing," a muscular Kumeyaay man, wearing a
traditional warrior dressed of eagle feathers around his waist,
stands 6 feet tall on a 3-foot pedestal in front of City Hall.
With his right hand extended up and his left holding a
traditional bird-song gourd rattle, the sculpture depicts a
spiritual journey, Contreras said. Under the sculpture are the
words "Emaay Ehaa Keypina" or "Creator Hear
Me."

Contreras has been on his own spiritual and professional journey,
he said. Born in San Diego in 1963, he was raised and still lives
on the San Pasqual Indian Reservation in Valley Center, where the
Kumeyaay were forced to move about 100 years ago. He was the
youngest in a family of 10 children who lived in impoverished
conditions.

The self-taught artist couldn't afford formal art education, he
said, until he sold a couple of pieces for $30 and $40 at the Off
Track Gallery in Leucadia in 1993.

"It was a hard time so that was a lot of money for me,"
Contreras said. "I studied (bronzing) at Palomar College
after I did two public commissions so I could afford
classes."

Today, his pieces go for $28,000 to $100,000 each and he was
recently named to the board of the California Center for the
Arts, Escondido.

But his work is more than a means of living, he said, it's a way
of educating the public about its heritage, native and non-native
alike.

"If you call yourself an American, it's where your American
came from," Contreras said.

He added that he wants his art to break down negative stereotypes
of American Indians historically portrayed in Hollywood media.

For example, Contreras said, "Seeing" is not an image
one would have commonly seen on film. "The only thing we had
in our hands was a bottle of booze or a war drum," he said.

Women, he said, have also been depicted in a negative or
incorrect way.

"Settling Woman," he said, was made to honor Kumeyaay
women. The sculpture sits at the entrance of the City Hall
courtyard. In her lap she holds a hand-woven basket used to
gather wild plants and acorns. Next to her is a boulder, called a
metate, with numerous indentations that women traditionally used
as bowls for grinding food with a hand-held stone. -read
entire article-

Sarah Sander puts a lot of stock in horses and their ability to
help people.

The Brownsville woman is starting a unique business at her home
at 3956 County Road 3.

She calls it Windhorse Awareness, partly by virtue of the
frequent winds that blow on the ridge, and partly because of the
sense of awareness that Sander feels horses can impart.

A sense of awareness is a broad way to describe a complex and
spiritual journey that people make with Equine Experiential
Learning (EEL).

A synopsis of EEL can be found in a sidebar with this story.
Sander shared some of the intricacies with this reporter on a
warm July 7 afternoon, and yes, the wind was blowing at her farm
at the top of the mile grade above Brownsville.

Sander speaks with a combination of serenity and conviction about
her business, even though she acknowledged toward the end of our
discussion that some people have a hard time grasping or even
accepting it.

Its kind of woo-woo, I guess, people like to
say, she said. Its a little out there.

But lets start at the beginning. Sander, 38, works for
United Auto Supply in La Crosse, Wisconsin. She moved to her farm
15 years ago after she got married. Thats when she got her
first horse, Apollo.

She grew up in Milwaukee, but always loved horses when she would
encounter them at summer camps and such.

She knew she wanted to do something with horses, because she felt
drawn to them.

Then she read a book that brought it all together, The Tao of
Equus, by Linda Kohanov. The book opened her eyes to a whole new
world. Rather than having a horse be a slave to her wishes, she
learned to listen to what a horse has to say. It opened different
connections within her.

I highly recommend anybody reading it, Sander said.

She then took a three-day workshop program from Kohanov last
fall. I just came home reeling. It was like entering a
whole different world, Sander said. It helped her so much
that she could not ignore it. She thought it could help others,
so she became a certified EEL instructor under Kohanovs
tutelage.

Sander said the class made her more open, and taught her not to
stuff her emotions.

People at a crossroads are the most likely to take an EEL class,
Sander said. They might be looking for something different,
making a transition from a death or divorce, or wanting to find
more meaning in their life.

Horses are good teachers, Sander feels. They are willing to
meet you half way or more than half way if youre willing to
listen to them, she said. -read
entre article-

For some, the concepts "other people" and
"fun" don't occupy the same lexicon. By contrast, the
vast majority can't stand the idea of empty rooms -- much less
entire empty towns, desert isles in the sense of being deserted.

By Anneli Rufus

The acid test is this: Enter a room -- or a minivan, say, or a
lake -- in which a few people are located. Not a lot but a few.
Exactly what they are doing there does not really matter. The
issue is, rather, that they are there. And so are you. Gauge your
happiness.

Over the ensuing hour, one of three things is going to happen.
The number of people in this picture is going to increase,
decrease, or stay the same. Envision each of these scenarios in
turn. All is revealed by where and when you flinch: the quiver of
your viscera as the scene fills, or as it depopulates. But which?

For some, the concepts "other people" and
"fun" don't occupy the same lexicon. By contrast, the
vast majority can't stand the idea of empty rooms -- much less
entire empty towns, or desert isles in the sense of being
deserted, not of being sandy. For most people, solitude seems the
birthplace of nightmares, pleasant only for hermit monks
chiseling poems into boulders or, like Saint Simeon the Stylite,
living out their lives on platforms atop sixty-foot poles. For
party people -- your typical Tamika Sociable or Jared
Join-the-Frat -- fun means making life into an ongoing game of
Sardines, the more the merrier. To them, being alone just means
being lonely. Or lost. Or a murderer.

The mob has to frown on loners, right? For the sake of its own
future, because too many hermits reduce the size of the gene
pool. A lot more chiseled haiku, maybe, and less arguing, but no
raves and hockey teams.

The mob doesn't want to believe that the more crowded your
imagined room, minivan, or lake becomes, the less fun you are
having. It's automatic, and it's arithmetic: With every new
arrival, you feel worse. Yet your fun quotient rises with every
goodbye.

In a crowded world, if you're this type, almost anything you
can manage to do alone is fun. So enough with the negatives.
Enough with what you don't like and are not (for instance: a
serial killer, because killing, especially serial killing, is a
people thing, which entails being around people and concerning
yourself with them, which -- and this is the whole point --
loners don't).

Society expects certain activities to be done in company, so to
do them alone, no matter how much fun this invokes, means
attracting undue attention. Try dining solo in chichi
restaurants, for instance. You might love the pancetta-wrapped
figs, but from all the other tables eyes peer at you with pity or
fear. Did her date stand her up? Did his wife who used to cook
dinner for him die? What does she have concealed in that bulky
purse?

Other pursuits, on the other hand, can, in full view of the mob,
be enjoyed alone. Sociable types do these things solo only by
accident, or by default, yet you do so by choice and thank your
lucky stars. Fishing, for instance, at Oakland's Lake Chabot or
Livermore's Lake Del Valle. Shopping -- anywhere, but
hangar-sized thrift stores such as Berkeley's Goodwill and
Salvation Army are especially accommodating. Their employees
never needle customers with questions such as Can I help you? and
because no two items in a thrift store's inventory are alike,
sifting through a single department can easily take hours. -read
entire article-

~ ~ ~

Softball
Together
In which our correspondent investigates the spiritual value of
slow-pitch softball.

By Marc Gellman
Newsweek

The real greatness of slow-pitch softball has
nothing to do with baseball and everything to do with the
spiritual value of giving guys who have not played a team sport
since grade school a chance to remember what it feels like to
play on a team. There are, of course, many amateur men's tennis,
soccer, ice hockey and basketball leagues, but you actually have
to be in shape to play in them. Slow-pitch softball is doubly
soft and therefore doubly welcoming to the guy who has not lost
his passion for team sports but might just have lost an
unobstructed view of his shoes. Also, tennis is just you or one
partner, golf is usually just you alone or, at most, you and
three partners. Arc-pitch softball is you and eight or nine other
guys. In our synagogue softball league, the wives and kids (and
rabbis) come down to the games, and so you can usually get some
decent doughnuts between innings. The game is just one big crowd
of people trying to hit a ball and find each other. For guys who
play rats in the rat race and for soccer moms who play chauffeur
(and often the second income-producing rat) these games are a
blessed and welcome respite from the oppressive crud of our daily
lives. To name the blessing simply, arc-pitch softball is a way
to get bundled. And of course this bundling is equally powerful
for women who find their way into women's fast or slow pitch
leagues. Softball heals regardless of gender, race, or belt size.

The Masai tribe of Africa has a saying,
Sticks in a bundle are unbreakable. Sticks alone can be
broken by a child. I use this saying to teach little kids
about the spiritual value of community. I hand out pencils and I
ask each kid to break one pencil. Almost everyone can break a
single pencil, and the strong kids break it easily. Then I ask
them to hold five pencils in a bundle in their hands and try to
break all five pencils at once. Nobody can do it. The truth of
pencils is also the truth of community.

Five years ago, Prof. Robert Putnam in his masterwork,
Bowling Alone, proved with bowling leagues the same
thing I prove with pencils and the Masai tribe proves with
sticks. He said that the precipitous decline in team bowling
leagues was a sign of the erosion of what he called social
capital, by which he meant those communal and communitarian
forces that keep us together in good groups doing good things. I
agree with him still, but I believe he missed the fact that many
of those ex-bowlers are now playing softball. Like our synagogue
itself, I see our brotherhood's softball league as a critically
important bundling place for the men in our congregation and for
their families rooting them on in the stands.

In addition to the place we work and the place we call home,
every spiritually healthy human being on our planet needs a third
place where we can get bundled. Putnam discovered that if you are
completely unbundledif you belong to no third
placeand then you join any group, your chances of dying
from a heart attack drop 50 percent. And so, I said consolingly
to Paul Scheiner, who, like me, huffed his way off the field,
Paul, this is saving your life. He looked at me and
smiled, Rabbi, you want a doughnut?

The opening of the eyes is one of the very last steps in the
making of a Hindu religious sculpture. A priest will ritually
scrape the eye with a golden needle, or add an extra flick of
paint, and a figure cast in bronze or carved in stone, a work of
"fine art" in our dry vocabulary, becomes something
else: a divinity who returns our gaze.

Dozens of pairs of eyes look out from "Images of the Divine:
South and Southeast Asian Sculpture From the Mr. and Mrs. John D.
Rockefeller 3rd Collection" at the Asia Society. The 50
sculptures come from what is considered to be one of the finest
small gatherings of such material in the United States. They are
also, individually and in concert, thrilling examples of
spiritually activist art, which is what all great religious art
is.

They were not made primarily to entertain or give optical
pleasure, although they do both. Their job was to wake you up,
point you in a moral direction, make you look at the greed,
hatred and delusions that sit like sharp rocks in the soul. Once
you see the truth about yourself, the idea is, you can change
yourself. And when you change yourself, you change the world.
That's the karmic deal.

Some sort of a desire to make a difference in the world motivated
John D. Rockefeller 3rd to found the Asia Society in 1956 and,
for nearly a quarter of a century, to give the institution nearly
300 Asian objects - Indian sculptures, Chinese porcelains,
Japanese paintings - that he and his wife had assembled. Over the
years, exhibitions of portions of the collection alternated with
other, temporary shows at Asia Society's Park Avenue
headquarters. But only since an expansion of exhibition space in
2001 have large chunks of Rockefeller material been visible on a
more or less continuous, rotating basis. "Images of the
Divine," representing about half the Indian and Southeast
Asia holdings, is the latest of these presentations. -read
entire article-

Outside St. James Episcopal Church, the cacophony of Albion's
street life -- the wail of police sirens, the growl of barely
muffled car and motorcycle engines -- continued unabated.

Inside, all was still among the couple of dozen believers, who
knelt in silence, except for the street noise that occasionally
filtered in.

They were participating in a Taize service which emphasizes
personal spiritual reflection.

The rector, the Rev. Edward Scully, brought Taize, an ecumenical
service with origins in a monastic community at Taize, France, to
his congregation a few months ago.

The hour-long service of prayer, music and meditation is held at
7 p.m. on the Monday following the second Sunday of the month.

Scully learned about the form of worship a few years ago and
scheduled one at a teen camp. When the service ended and
announcements made, he was shocked that the teens didn't make a
beeline for the door.

"I was bowled over; they recognized the power and the
beauty," he said.

At a recent service at St. James, people bowed their heads in
meditation or gazed at the crucifix or the candle-filled altar
for most of the service.

The service strayed from the traditional Sunday service in a
number of other ways: no sermon, no collection plates and little
recited scripture.

It began with the repetitive singing of an acclamation, a prayer
and the first of several periods of silence. Scully read words
from St. Benedict, there was more singing, more silence and time
when congregants could approach the altar and light a candle.

"Not everyone wants to come to church on Sundays, but still
may want something to feed their souls," Scully said.

"If you go to a traditional service, there's talk and
singing, talk and singing. It's almost as though the minds and
mouths go on forever.

"I know there is a yearning out there. This may open the
doors at a different time and venue for those who want to come
in," he said. "There is a whole different dimension in
Taize that's not in a Sunday service."

Armetta Pewsey, 81, a third-generation member of St. James,
appreciates the contrast.

"You get a different feeling than you do on Sundays,"
she said. "If God looked down, I think he'd be proud."

Besides a handful of church members, a group of 20 from the
Spring Arbor Free Methodist Church attended a recent Taize
service at St. James.

It was the second visit to a Taize service for Michaella Jacoby.
Her first encounter was in Chicago, where some 500 people
gathered in a huge Catholic church sanctuary. She loved the
service at St. James.

"This one was on a smaller scale, and I loved the music; it
was so much fun to sing in rounds," she said, referring to
different groups starting the song at different points.

"I do live by donations, and when I get low, I say,
Lord, I need big monies,' so it's kind of a joke between
us," said the 57-year-old hermit who lives a life of prayer
and semi-solitude in a bluffside coulee off Hwy. 35, north of
Genoa.

As an example, she tells how once when she was $100 overdrawn in
her bank account, a benefactor stopped by the same afternoon with
a check for $300. The money was enough to cover the overdraft and
put her account back in the black as well as provide her with the
means to assist someone else who needed money.

"That's how it is with God," she said. "If you
trust him faithfully, he will take care of you."

Following God's call

A Carmelite sister who was raised in Connecticut, Dawiczyk came
to the Genoa area in 1998 after a benefactor and friend purchased
the 55-acre site and gave it to her for her hermitage.

She previously was part of a small group of Carmelite sisters who
live in a monastery on a ridge near Houston, Minn., but she said
she left there in 1996 because she felt God was calling her to
lead an even more secluded life.

Dawiczyk sought help in her quest from the Diocese of La Crosse,
which aided her in finding a place to stay and guided her through
a formal process of discernment developed for individuals wishing
to live a hermitical life in the diocese. -read
entire story-

While the nearby beach drew thousands, 18 people gathered this
week in a Loyola Marymount University classroom to plumb the
lessons of a charismatic Trappist monk who died almost 40 years
ago.

Led by scholar and Anglican priest Donald Grayston, the group met
to study Thomas Merton  writer, contemplative and one of
the few religious superstars of the 20th century. Called
"Thomas Merton: Catholic Monk, Interfaith Pioneer," the
four-day course explored the legacy of a religious thinker who
was admired by popes and the Beat Poets, who shuddered at the
prospect of war, and who studied Gandhi and Buddhism as well as
Scripture.

Although Merton spent most of his adult life at the Abbey of
Gethsemani in Kentucky, silent except for prayer and the clamor
of making cheese, the monk spoke to millions through his prose
and poetry.

Written at the direction of his abbot, Merton's 1948
autobiography, "The Seven Storey Mountain," sold
600,000 copies in its first year, making it one of the most
popular accounts of a spiritual journey since John Bunyan's 1678
"The Pilgrim's Progress." And in Merton's lifetime,
abruptly ended in 1968 when he was accidentally electrocuted in
Thailand, he was that rare religious figure who was also a
cultural icon, much as his friend the Dalai Lama is today.

But that was then.

"I had never heard of him," said student Karen
Pavic-Zabinski. The 55-year-old psychiatric nurse, a graduate
student in theology at Loyola Marymount, signed up for the course
after she heard Grayston speak in another class.

"It really appealed to me to have a specialist in Merton be
my mentor in Merton," the Valencia woman said.

Newly smitten, she has been reading as many of Merton's multitude
of books as she can. In them, she sees evidence of at least one
mental breakdown, shortly after his ordination in 1949, followed
by a spiritual recovery.

"The theme that has emerged in all his writing," she
said, "is that vulnerability is a precursor to
enlightenment." -read
entire story-

Most of us fantasize about "getting away from it all"
but few of us have the courage or the ability to totally make the
break from lives full with family and work responsibilities.

Australian producers and writers Stewart Nestel and Peter Davis
actually went in search of people who have chosen to become
hermits, and of people who encountered them.

The Australian bush can be brutally harsh and unforgiving as well
as hauntingly beautiful. It is also an ideal place to seek a
solitary life.

Being so totally alone in nature can be a unique experience. It
can unlock all sorts of secrets of one's true self. It can teach
a person to stop time. It can be a place of escape, and of
discovery.

"In Search of the Hermit Within" is a story about
people in search of something that only solitude could provide. -listen
to the radio show- (you will not be able to click on the link
to listen to the show if you use Mozilla Firefox. Try Internet
Explorer.)

OK, its no Buddhist koan. Maybe its not even the
deepest of insights. Still, this sentence snapped me to
attention. Offered by a Japanese monk to an American seeker of
Buddhist wisdom in Maura OHallorans essay "Annie
Mirror Heart," these words resonated for me emotionally. As
it turned out, they held the key to reflecting not only on the
contents of The Best American Spiritual Writing 2004 (hereafter,
TBASW) but also to a pesky few things weighing on my mind.

Admittedly, I had cracked open this anthology with an agenda
firmly in place. Like Annie in the essay, I too was seeking an
alternative path. In the midst of writing a book on the origins
of religion, I wanted company in my retreat from
too-much-in-favor evolutionary theories that smack of scientific
reductionism. The thought of reading one more book that
explained religion as rooted in our genes [see my
June Bookslut essay on The God Gene], or in our ancient,
specialized, Swiss-blade-knifelike brain modules, was too much.

I needed a fix badly: a reunion with the light and heat that
emerges when people, real people, engage with the spiritual. As a
scientist, I opened this book wanting some evidence to support
some answers. I wanted to shore up my own ideas about how
spirituality is rooted in emotional relating, how it emerges when
people are transformed so much by their relating-to-each-other
that they begin to relate outward and upward, with the invisible,
the unknowable.

As my scientist-author self engaged in this seeking, it occurred
to me that I was caught up in a parallel personal search as I
near what Bill Maher calls the seven squared birthday
[Utne Reader interview, July-August 2005]. Alternately energized
and horridly restless, I was undergoing a period of
self-questioning. But here too I had fallen into my
tried-and-true method of looking for some evidence that would
lead to some answers: all black and all white, please; no shades
of gray need apply.

Thus I began reading TBASW with pen at the ready, together with
whatever analytic capability I could muster. -read
entire article-

With the kosher designation, the Popcorn Zone becomes the
most diversified kosher popcorn store in the world, said
Sherri Rothberg, who co-owns the store with her husband, Barry.

The koshering process was time intensive, but ultimately proved
to be a labor of love on behalf of the community.

You have to submit kosher certification on all ingredients
and submit a product and ingredient statement, she said.
We needed to kosher our whole kitchen. This involved
rendering all appliances, surfaces, dishware, cookware, utensils,
and virtually everything else involved in food preparation
compliant under a rabbis supervision. The metal and glass
utensils had to be boiled and then taken to the Mikvah (Jewish
ritual bath). It takes an entire day, Sherri said.

Everything that was made in the store prior to the koshering
process had to be discarded. The ORB performs periodic
re-inspections to ensure the store continues to comply with all
kosher rules.

We could not be happier that we went kosher, Sherri
said. Its worth everything. For me, this has been a
spiritual awakening. Its a very nice feeling. We feel so
good when people come in. Theyre so grateful and thank us
for becoming kosher.

Boca Raton is home to a large Orthodox Jewish community and many
observant Jews reside in the neighborhoods near the Popcorn Zone,
Sherri Rothberg said.

Kosher foods also appeal to the broader community, including many
followers of the Muslim, Hindu, and Seventh Day Adventist faiths,
as well as vegetarians and individuals who are lactose
intolerant. -read
entire article-

The first U.S. appearance by three world-renowned spiritual
master -- Swami Chetanananda, Master Charles Cannon and Swami
Shankaranand -- promises fourteen entertaining days of
meditation, enlightenment, humor and love. The 3 Gurus program
will take place at the Doubletree Guest Suites in Santa Monica,
California, from September 12 through 25, 2005.

Portland, OR (PRWEB) July 9, 2005 -- Three of the most innovative
spiritual teachers of our time will join forces this September 12
 25 for The 3 Gurus series of programs in Santa
Monica, California. This program will be the first time the 3
Gurus have appeared together in the United States. Their program
last November in Melbourne, Australia, was a resounding success,
touching and inspiring hundreds of attendees.

The 3 Gurus -- Master Charles Cannon, Swami Chetanananda, and
Swami Shankarananda -- will offer twelve nights of talks,
conversations, meditation, and question and answer sessions at
the Doubletree Guest Suites, 1707 Fourth Street, Santa Monica.
The programs will culminate in a two-day meditation intensive on
the weekend of September 24 and 25. The series is a rare
opportunity to share in the insights and company of not one, but
three, accomplished teachers, and to experience the profound
transformation that occurs from contact with their spiritual
energy.

Each of these masters represents a unique perspective and
emphasis in practice. Sharing the lineage of Bhagawan Nityananda,
a great Indian saint of the 20th century, these teachers have
each found a way of bringing others to a state of awakening and
deeper spiritual experiences.

Swami Chetanananda is the spiritual director of the Nityananda
Institute, based in Portland, Oregon, the author of many books on
spirituality, including The Breath of God and There Is No Other,
and draws on the ancient practices of Trika Yoga and Tibetan
Buddhist rituals. http://www.nityanandainstitute.org

Master Charles Cannon, the Modern Mystic, is the originator of
the Synchronicity Experience, author of the Bliss of Freedom, and
spiritual director of the Synchronicity Foundation in Virginia. http://www.synchronicity.org

Swami Shankarananda, Australias leading meditation teacher,
is the director of the Shiva School of Meditation in Melbourne.
He is the author of the best-selling books Happy for No Good
Reason and Consciousness is Everything. http://www.shivayoga.org

Summer is the travelling season. Jack Kerouac
waited for the New Jersey weather to warm up before I took
off for the Pacific ocean with $50 in my pocket  the
first of his series of journeys across late-1940s America that
resulted in On the Road (BBC £19.99), the
classic chronicle of Beat generation restlessness. Hollywood star
Matt Dillon reads the story  every exuberant, poetic,
passionate, jazzed-up word of it  of the writer and his
unforgettable friend Dean Moriarty, the holy con man with
the shining mind. Dillon gives the impression that
hes coming at the text (all 10 hours, 15 minutes) in a
blind, flying leap, but this rough-and-ready approach, in all its
gravelly intensity, is well matched to the books
free-flowing spontaneity. This production is available only as an
MP3CD  which means it can fit on one CD, but you also need
the right kit (which can include DVD players and PCs) on which to
play it.

~ ~ ~

Folk
instruments of India
Despite the UNESCO drafting model provisions to safeguard
folklore and traditional culture more than a decade ago, not much
has been done in India.

Art is the symbol of human dignity. Just as life requires air,
humanity requires art. Christopher Candwell has observed that
art is the product of society as the pearl is the product
of the oyster. India, being one of the most ancient
civilisations, is a treasure house of many rich and varied arts,
particularly folk-arts. The state of Karnataka is known to be the
cradle of several folk arts.

Among them the performing arts are very significant as they were
and still are an important source of entertainment to and means
of expression of their devotion to local deities by rural folk.

Performing arts are live and nurtured by the marginalised
sections of society. They have never been the glorified ornaments
of royal families. They are neither helped by royal patronage nor
by religious institutions. They are the very life and breath of
the common folk.

An essential pre-requisite of all performing arts is folk
instruments of one type or the other. The essence and sweetness
of music and beauty of the dance in performing arts is magnified
by the musical instruments. -read
entire article-

July 3, 2005

Exclusive to the Nondual Highlights and the
Real News:

The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill

A review by Gloria Lee

This is one terrific movie I saw last night. A documentary that
does far more than tell the story of a man at loose ends who
begins simply by feeding a flock of wild parrots and thereby
finds a purpose for his own life. Yes, wild parrots can survive
on their own in San Francisco, so other than taking in a few sick
or injured birds, Mark Bittner was not needed. But the parrots
eventually bring him everything he needs to be happy.

When Mark begins identifying individual birds and naming them,
his connection with the birds is reminiscent of Jane Goodall and
her chimps. Someone with no visible means of support who devotes
vast amounts of time to observing and documenting behavior and
relationships among the birds could easily be labeled
dysfunctional by our society. Mark describes himself as a
"dharma bum" who came to San Francisco in the 70's,
aspiring to be a rock musician after he gave up on being a
writer. His favorite poet was Gary Snyder, who commented,
"If you want to find nature, start where you are." So
he did.

We learn his story in small bits interspersed between
observations about the pair bonding, squabbles and divorces among
the birds, who are remarkably like us in many ways. Mark came to
the Hill after a period of homelessness when he was hired to be a
caretaker and cleaner for an elderly lady. He stayed on in the
dilapidated cottage after she was replaced by a young couple in
the main house. They explain letting him live there rent free for
the next three years because of his work with the parrots. People
give him better cameras and a computer to document his work. The
Italian restaurant cook feeds him, the local pet store gives him
food for the parrots, the tourists come to watch and ask
questions about the parrots. While he is a very likable and
gentle man, this recognition of the importance of his work by
others is a sign that more is going on here than meets the eye.
People sense this and want to honor it. Mark is already locally
famous and written up in the newspaper by the time the
documentary film maker shows up.

In seeing the parrots through Mark's eyes, with that wonderful
connection people can forge with animals, the film brings us to a
similar point of deep caring and appreciation of them as well.
But the real gift is having such an intimate glimpse into the
heart of Mark Bittner. Not so much at loose ends as he first
appears, Mark shyly reveals that he feels he is on a path of
inner transformation. And he is deeply committed to this process
in a spiritual way despite not understanding exactly where it is
taking him. Without revealing the surprise ending to the film, I
can say that Mark became a writer after all, and is currently on
a book tour.

A priest chanted as a copper Lexus pulled up in front of the
cinder block building. Out stepped Sri Ganapati Sachchidananda
Swamiji, who had traveled from India to Mississippi for the first
time in 12 years to offer wisdom, spiritual music and to
consecrate the ground upon which the local Hindu community will
build a new temple.

"People always want some kind of spiritual master to connect
to the cosmic consciousness," said Prakasa Rao of the Hindu
Temple Society of Mississippi and a sociology professor at
Jackson State University. "They know how to take you on a
spiritual path."

Hindus consider Sri Swamiji  as the visitor is known 
to be a saint or spiritual guru. As a guru, he spends his life
cultivating a connection to God. In turn, he offers devotees
teaching, healing and a glimpse of the divine. -read
entire article-

One set of arms extends from an elderly Hasidic rabbi with a
sugar-spun beard, clad in a frock coat and velvet yarmulke. His
appearance is more reminiscent of prewar Eastern Europe than
modern-day Western Pennsylvania.

Completing the embrace is a young addict, with pained, tired eyes
that belie his age. We don't know his name or his demon of
choice.

It could be alcohol or heroin or pain-killers or something else.
The particular substance doesn't matter. Not really, anyway.

What matters is that like the hundreds of patients here at
Gateway Rehabilitation Center in Center Township, Beaver County,
the man has been given another chance at sobriety, another chance
at life.

"That was the first time I heard you speak," the man
tells the rabbi, tugging on his baggy jeans and subconsciously
checking to make sure his stubbed-out cigarette is still tucked
behind his ear. "Thank you so much," he says, softly
but without shame.

Hugs for Dr. Abraham Twerski come by the dozens here during his
monthly visits to the nonprofit drug and alcohol treatment center
he founded in 1972.

They come in the security line at the airport and in the aisles
of the grocery store. They come from strangers in the streets of
countries as far away as Japan, Finland and Brazil. They come
from recovered addicts in all walks of life -- surgeons,
politicians, journalists and construction workers.

Even women have found a way to hug Twerski without violating the
religious principle that forbids him from having co-ed physical
contact with anyone other than his wife and daughters.

"Abe!" shouts a heavyset black woman dressed in pink
hospital scrubs in the Gateway lobby, where a portrait of Twerski
hangs in the corner he refers to sarcastically as "the
shrine." She clasps her arms across her chest and sways
side-to-side as Twerski does the same, standing a few feet away.

"You never have to worry about me getting in trouble because
I don't have any anonymity," Twerski says.

He wouldn't have it any other way.

More than 30 years after entering the wrenching field of chemical
dependency, it's the human contact that sustains Twerski, and in
turn, has improved the lives of thousands of people on the brink
of self-destruction. -read
entire story-

~ ~ ~

Blueprint
for livingDrawing on many spiritual sources, Bill W.
summed up the essence of what brought him to sobriety

It took William Griffith Wilson 17 years of blackouts, broken
promises and wrenching despair before he took his last drink of
alcohol in 1934.

Four years later, it took him only 30 minutes to scribble the
essence of his spiritual journey to sobriety on a yellow scratch
pad so it could be used to help other alcoholics.

The result was the first draft of the 12 Steps, the heart of the
Alcoholics Anonymous program of recovery and a path described as
nothing short of a miracle by the many who have followed it.

"Two hundred years from now, the 20th century won't be
remembered for penicillin or landing on the moon, but for the 12
Steps," says Graeme Cunningham, director of addiction with
Homewood Health Centre in Guelph and associate professor of
psychiatry at Hamilton's McMaster University.

Cunningham's words are typical of the praise heaped on the
fellowship.

British author Aldous Huxley, one of Wilson's contemporaries,
called him "the greatest social architect of our
century."

In 1999, Time magazine put Wilson in the company of such giants
as Albert Einstein, Gandhi and Sigmund Freud as one of the 100
most influential people of the century.

To Wayne Skinner, deputy clinical director of the addictions
program at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in
Toronto, it's hard to think of anything that has had more impact
than the 12 Steps of AA throughout the history of addiction.

You wouldn't get much argument from many of the 50,000 people
gathering in Toronto this weekend for the annual international AA
convention. This year celebrates the 70th anniversary of the day
that Wilson  known in AA circles as "Bill W.," in
keeping with the organization's principle of anonymity  met
another alcoholic, physician Robert Smith, or "Dr.
Bob", in Akron, Ohio, and discovered the healing power that
emerges when people fighting the same demons share their stories.
-read
more, and the 12 steps-

BELLINGHAM - In a commercial landscape that seems to spawn
evermore gas station mini-marts and coffee shop drive-thrus, the
Pennsylvania Farmer Boy general store and farm on Pulaski
Boulevard provides a spiritual sanctuary.

Sprawled over nearly five acres, Omar and Barbara Wenger own and
run the entire operation - with help in varying degrees from
their eight children - which includes farmland, a large chicken
coop and indoor and outdoor furniture displays.

Inside the store, customers can find everything from wind chimes
to slab bacon; breakfast cereal to quilts - and a never-ending
supply of fresh-baked breads and goodies produced in ovens
located only several feet from the cash registers.

"They always have good things here," said Barbara
Wilson, a Franklin resident and regular Farmer Boy customer.
"I come here for the soup mix, the breads, and their
vegetables just seem fresher - and it's nice to talk to the
people who work at the store," she added.

While the assortment of items is eclectic, some otherwise common
supplies in typical general stores are notably missing from the
shop. The business is admittedly influenced by the family's
membership in the Mennonite Church, a conservative Protestant
sect with beliefs similar to those embraced by the Amish - renown
for embracing literal teachings from the Bible and imposing a
simple but strict, rustic lifestyle on its followers.

For example, the store has no lottery tickets for sale, no
cigarettes or other tobacco products, and no "strong
drink" - Omar Wenger's term for alcoholic beverages. Gospel
choir music plays in place of droning Top 40 radio, and not
surprisingly, the store is closed on Sundays, when the family is
involved in Sunday School and church services at the Mendon
Mennonite Church on Rte. 140.

While the Amish shun owning and driving cars, and do not use
electrical power drawn from power grids, Mennonites are decidedly
more liberal.
"We believe in some practical uses that (the Amish) do
not," said Wenger. "We drive cars, for example, though
they have to be practical; you're not going to see one of us
driving a red convertible," he added. -read
entire article-

Unless you've been on the moon for the past several months, you
may be aware that His Holiness the Dalai Lama will be visiting
the Wood River Valley, Friday, Sept. 9, through Monday, Sept. 12.
Because of his visit, folks are thinking about other spiritual
tie-ins.

Just announced is the formation of the Sun Valley Spiritual Film
Festival. Festival founders Mary Gervase and Claudio Ruben are
booking several noteworthy films that will be shown concurrently
with the Dalai Lama's visit, from Friday, Sept. 9 through Monday,
Sept. 12, at the Liberty Theatre in and the Community Campus
theater, both in Hailey.

The festival will focus on films that explore themes relevant to
the Buddhist tradition. They were chosen to compliment the Dalai
Lama's message of compassion and reconciliation.

The wish list of films that will be screened includes "The
Cup" by Indian director Khyentse Norbu, which takes place in
a monastery during the World Cup soccer finals. The other films
are "Discovering Buddhism," a series of 13 short
documentaries, the Canadian film "Words of My Perfect
Teachers," Australian film "On the Road Home," the
1972 movie "Siddhartha," "Ethics for the New
Millenium," featuring the Dalai Lama, and the Tibetan film
"Cry of the Snow Lion."

Festival organizers are seeking donations for financial support.
They've already received a generous donation but still need more
in order to fund the total cost of the event.

For more information, contact Bex Wilkinson at bex@aol.com or
Mary Ann Chub at m80@cox.net.